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Tuesday, October 20, 2015

With this post I will be caught up on my Cocktail Wednesday posts -- until the next one.

The week's cocktail (October 14), was the Bloody Mary, recipe from here, I think. I only think, because I didn't make this week's drink. My husband was the bartender/chef this week. I was at the Winchester Mystery House on a tour and running late so he took over.

Ingredients:

32 ounces tomato juice (or try using Clamato juice, my favorite)

Juice of 1/2 lemon

Juice of 1/2 lime

3 tablespoons worchestershire sauce

1 teaspoon tabasco

1 tablespoon horseradish

1 teaspoon ground cumin

1 teaspoon ground caraway seed

1/2 tablespoon dry oregano

1/2 tablespoon ground celery seed

Sea salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste

Ice

8 ounces vodka (optional)

He had a pitcher of it made (without the vodka) before I got home.

I had never had a Bloody Mary before and these were, again, very tasty. What a way to get your vegetables!

The drink for this week is a Dark and Stormy. Looking forward to another one!

The next drink we had for cocktail Wednesday (October 7) was the Cucumber Gimlet, recipe from here.

Ingredients:

2 Fresh basil leaves

2 slices Cucumber (.25 inches)

1.5 oz Moon Mountain Vodka

1 oz Lemonade

.25 oz Lime juice

We substituted gin for the vodka and used simple syrup and lemons instead of lemonade, but otherwise followed the recipe.

I followed the instructions:

In a shaker, muddle the basil and cucumber.
Add the remaining ingredients and fill with ice.
Shake well and strain into a rocks glass filled with fresh ice.
Garnish with a lime wedge or cucumber wheel. We used cucumber as the garnish.

I'm very behind on my bread and soup making this year so today I made one of each.

First the bread. We had dinner at Black Angus (a steak place) on Friday night. They have delicious bread. I looked up a copycat recipe, here.

Quite tasty. I didn't put the oatmeal on like they do at Black Angus. this is how it's supposed to look.

The recipe I used said to bake at 375 for 60 minutes. I baked the first batch for 50 minutes and it was well done. The next batch was almost burned. For the final batch, I decreased the temp to 350 and it seemed to do okay.

And then I made a soup, recipe from here. Actually, I made the soup first.

It's called the Best Chicken Soup Ever, and it was good and easy.

I didn't modify the recipe except to double it because it didn't seem like it'd be enough otherwise. It tasted like a chicken tortilla soup, without the tortillas. (so I added tortillas and sour cream). A definite do over. I got the recipe from Katie's blog. I get some of my best ideas from her.

Re-looking at her picture of the soup, it appears she added rice. probably a good call. next time.

Tuesday, October 13, 2015

So, one of the items on my list this year was to go to Bodega Bay. For those of you who don't know, Bodega Bay was the setting of Alfred Hitchcock's movie The Birds. Ever since I realized that Bodega Bay was a short drive from our house, I have wanted to go (okay, so it took me 17 years to get there ....). We finally went this past weekend.

Since I'm not very good at figuring out what to do when I go new places, Nevada and I downloaded a driving tour which highlighted some of the spots where not only The Birds was filmed but also The Goonies. Though there were some flaky things about the tour, I felt like it was worthwhile to get it. I would certainly be able to find the places on my own should I ever take someone else there (so no need to buy again).

We also opted to watch both movies the night before our trip. What a great plan on our part. The scenes from both movies were fresh in our minds and certainly enhanced the experience.

First stop was the school house. The school house is in Bodega, not Bodega Bay. In the movie it's right up the street from the water, not so in real life.

In the movie, the kids are all in the school when the blackbirds start gathering on the playground. They file out quietly but then the birds start attacking and they start running.

The tour guide suggested that one person go to the bottom of the hill and take a picture of people running from the school. I didn't ask the other people who were there to do this, but they so would have. If I ever go again, I will definitely do that. That's my husband on the left running.

From there we drove down the hill to the general store where there's a life-sized Alfred Hitchcock out front.

We left there and took a back road to get back to Bodega Bay. Some beautiful views of the Pacific Ocean.